Re: [PATCH] Remove ambiguities in the COPYING file; add CONTRIBUTING file

[George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>]

On 11/08/16 01:51, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Aug 2016, Lars Kurth wrote:
>> COPYING file:
>> The motivation of this change is to make it easier for new
>> contributors to conduct a license and patent review, WITHOUT
>> changing any licenses.
>> - Remove references to BSD-style licenses as we have more
>>   common license exceptions and replace with "other license
>>   stanzas"
>> - List the most common situations under which code is licensed
>>   under licenses other than GPLv2 (section "Licensing Exceptions")
>> - List the most common non-GPLv2 licenses that are in use in
>>   this repository based on a recent FOSSology scan (section
>>   "Licensing Exceptions")
>> - List other license related conventions within the project
>>   to make it easier to conduct a license review.
>> - Clarify the incoming license as its omission has confused
>>   past contributors (section "Contributions")
>>
>> CONTRIBUTION file:
>> The motivation of this file is to make it easier for contributors
>> to find contribution related resources. Add information on existing
>> license related conventions to avoid unintentional future licensing
>> issues. Provide templates for copyright headers for the most commonly
>> used licenses in this repository.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@citrix.com>
>> ---
>>  CONTRIBUTING | 210 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  COPYING      |  64 ++++++++++++++----
>>  2 files changed, 260 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
>>  create mode 100644 CONTRIBUTING
>>
>> diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING b/CONTRIBUTING
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 0000000..7af13c4
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/CONTRIBUTING
>> @@ -0,0 +1,210 @@
>> +
>> +CONTRIBUTING
>> +============
>> +
>> +INBOUND LICENSE
>> +---------------
>> +
>> +Contributions are governed by the license that applies to relevant 
>> +specific file or by the license specified in the COPYING file, that
>              ^files

I think "file" is better here, as the license is on a file-by-file
basis, not on a whole contribution basis.  That is, if your contribution
changes a BSD file and a GPLv2 file in a single series (or a single
patch), then the changes to the BSD file are goverened by the BSD
licence, and the changes to the GPLv2 file are governed by the GPLv2.

> 
> 
>> +governs the license of its containing directory and its subdirectories.
>> +
>> +Most of the Xen Project code is licensed under GPLv2, but a number of 
>> +directories are primarily licensed under different licenses. 
>                     ^ I would remove "primarily" from this sentence

"primarily licensed under different licenses" implies to me that most of
the files in the directory are under a different license, but some may
be licensed GPLv2.  Without the "primarily" I would take that to imply
that *none* of the files are licensed GPLv2.

If there is at least one directory that has mostly non-GPLv2 files but
at least one GPLv2 file, or we anticipate that such directories might
exist in the future, I would leave the "primarily" in.  If there aren't
any now and we don't expect any in the future, then yes it's unnecessary
and should probably be removed.

 -George

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